


Everything But The Boy

by melanie1982



Category: 'Shory', Boy Meets World
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, M/M, Reincarnation, m/m - Freeform, non-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:31:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6486412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melanie1982/pseuds/melanie1982
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My first attempt at a Shory fanfic, so please be gentle with me.</p><p>Shawn needs Cory. Shawn doesn't get Cory. Bad things happen. The ending is (sort of) happy. 'Hopeful' might be a better word for it.</p><p>This story doesn't gel with canon. Major character deaths, plural.</p><p>This story is fiction. I don't know these people in real life, and I make no money from this story.</p><p>Angst</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginnings and Endings

**Author's Note:**

> I had the song "Missing" by Everything But The Girl stuck in my head while this story was forming in my mind. Lyrics are from said song. (If you've never heard the song, give it a spin; very plaintive 90s jam).
> 
> The reference to 11:11 is non-canon for these two, but a lot of people call it 'wish time.' Some believe that 11:11 (am and pm) is a time when the energies of the universe are perfectly balanced. Eleven is considered a spiritual number in general. For the sake of this story, 'wish time' is kind of Shawn and Cory ritual. Just go with it.  
> In this story, Cory and Topanga were back in Philly, getting ready to get married there, while Shawn was in NYC.

"I step off the train  
I'm walkin' down your street again  
And past your door  
But you don't live there anymore  
It's years since you've been there  
And now you've disappeared somewhere  
Like outer space  
You've found some better place  
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain.."

You woke up to that sad song on the radio. It should have told you the day was going to take a dark turn, but hindsight is always 20/20. You hadn't heard from him in three days - seventy three hours, nineteen minutes and forty two seconds, to be precise. The sound of the phone hanging up still burned in your ear, and the urge to call him was strong, but you resisted, giving him space. When the landline finally rang as you were in the kitchen making coffee, you tripped over a pile of laundry to reach it on the second ring. The caller ID showed his name, and your stomach dropped; would he still be angry? 

"Cory?"

A female sob crackled through the line. "Shawn, it's Topanga." Your heart stopped at the tears in her voice and you wondered if she was calling to scream at you, if she was going to confront you with what should have been so obvious to everyone, the elephant in the room.. You swallowed, willing your heart to return to its usual spot in your chest cavity. She spoke.

"It's about Cory. There's been an accident."

You saw white, gripping the phone to stay conscious. "Topanga." Your voice was as bloodless as your face, your mind a blank. "What..? What happened?"

"He was hit by a taxi. There was a woman - a pregnant woman - and Cory.. He saved her life. He's in the hospital; it's bad."

Cory was still alive. You exhaled the breath you hadn't realized you'd been holding. "I'll get the first flight out," you promised, but her voice rose, sharp, desperate - 

"He's not in Philly. He's in New York."

That didn't compute. Why would he be - 

"Cory said he needed one last adventure - on his own." The words 'without me' died on her lips, but you heard them, felt them. 

"Which hospital?" You grabbed your jacket and your keys and you ran, heart ready to burst; if he was going to die, you wished it WOULD burst. It wasn't until you reached the hospital that you realized you'd left without shoes.


	2. Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the hospital, and the days following

As soon as you entered the room, you knew. No matter what machines made his chest rise and fall or his heart beat or meds flood his broken body, you knew: Cory was gone. Topanga opened her arms to you and you accepted her embrace, smelling him on her, feeling his essence. She watched as you stroked his hand, as you leaned down and kissed his forehead. When Amy and Alan arrived, the decision was made, and those who handle such things did what needed to be done. Your heart stopped with his, at 11.11am. "Make a wish." 

The service was held in a church. You made yourself go, made yourself put on your best suit and walk down the aisle to the front toward the only person you'd ever truly loved. The significance of meeting Cory in front of the altar in front of all his friends and family was not lost on you. His family was there beside him, holding one another, holding Topanga, the almost-widow, and you were different, less-than, hidden in plain view. You saw that he was wearing the watch you'd given him, though it had stopped; you found that fitting. You wanted to scream at the world to make everything stop - but it went on, on and on, as it always would. You sat in a pew, a nominal Protestant with Catholic-sized guilt, aware of all the lies, the lust, the coveting you had perpetrated. You were caught between your dead best friend and his grieving fiancée. You had envied her thousands of times, and now neither of you would have him. You would carry your shameful secret forever. 

At the graveside service, you noticed a woman you didn't recognize. Her arm was in a cast, and she seemed banged up. "That's the woman he saved. Her baby.." Topanga couldn't finish that sentence. You walked over to where she stood. Of all the people there, she was probably the one who would best understand your pain; she now had a hole inside herself where the one she loved should be. The difference was that, in time, she would heal, and possibly have another baby. You would never have another Cory.

The eulogy was so generic, so hollow, and you finally lost it, the tight band of your self-control reaching its breaking point. "How can you all sit there and let a stranger talk about someone we all loved?" Your fury turned to the minister, verbal guns blazing. "How can you talk about his life? You didn't know him! You didn't love him!" Amy began to cry, and Topanga held your arm, tight - but you broke away. "Don't you understand? We were Cory and Shawn! We are not going to be Cory and Shawn anymore!" You were meant to cause a scene at his wedding, and instead, you caused a scene at his funeral.

You ran, diving headlong into alcohol, not surfacing for several days. It was so cold when you came up for air, the world dripping loud onto bare tile floor. You called his phone, just to hear his recorded voice. Hang up. Call back. Hang up. Call back. That song came on the radio again, the vocals running through your veins like the worst drug, yet you couldn't shut them out. 

"Could you be dead?   
You always were two steps ahead  
Of everyone.  
I'd walk behind while you would run.  
I look out by your house  
And I can almost hear you shout  
Down to me  
Where I always used to be  
And I miss you  
Like the deserts miss the rain.."

You finally left a message, praying to any and every god you could think of that he would receive it.

"Cory.. I'm sorry. I was an idiot. I'd take it all back if I could."

You meant ALL - every moment of comfort or pleasure or peace you'd ever known, just to give him one more breath. You'd take back every unkind word, true or not; every flash of jealousy; every impure thought. You'd even officiate his wedding if it meant he was alive. You had thought that Cory getting married would be the worst loss you would ever experience, and the fates had conspired to show you how wrong you could be.

"Cor.. You were an idiot, too. How could you just take off like that? I'M the impulsive one, remember?" He was the one meant to follow behind, racing to keep up, standing by to catch you if you fell. Where he had gone, you could not follow. You wanted to, but, Cory was so good, so pure; if there was a heaven, you were sure he was there - and if you cheated at life's test, you worried, you'd never get to see him again. You left messages over the next few days - some rambling, some sobbing, some reminiscent - until one day, the number was out of service. You had lost him all over again. You ate and you slept; you moved and you breathed - but you did not live, and you did not love. 

There were lovers; you sought solace in the arms of other men, men who looked like him or walked like him or dressed like him. They allowed you to hold Cory, touching him by proxy. You allowed yourself to give, but never to receive. You did not deserve to receive.


	3. A Foreign Language

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody understands. How could they?

The last man kept saying your name over and over, a prayer you could not answer. He held you, tasted your tears. You told him about Cory, because the man had asked you about your life, and the two were one in the same. When you'd finished, you knew he hadn't understood. Cory was an obscure religion, a foreign language, something no one else could fathom. No one else understood why you held onto him so tightly. He left, and you did not cry, because you were always alone, even in a room full of people.

Two years. Topanga had found new love, imprinted it on her soul like the gold script on the white cardstock. You attended the wedding, just to make it seem real, to see that she had truly done what you could not: she had let him go.

Afterwards, she hugged you, told you she had something for you. The box contained his personal effects, the fragments of a life interrupted. On the top sat a gold band.

"Why didn't he.. I mean, why didn't you leave it on him?"

Topanga smiled, but the wet things in her eyes, they were tears. "He wasn't my husband. We didn't get that far."

Beneath the ring were sealed envelopes, each bearing the words 'For Shawn', followed by specific life events: 'on his wedding day,' 'on the birth of his first child,' 'on his 30th birthday', etc. You stared.

"What do these mean?"

She sat with you, holding your hand as tenderly as if it were dying. "He always felt his would be a short life. Why do you think he was so intent on marrying so young? Why do you think he did HALF the crazy stuff he did?"

"I was usually the one being crazy; he just.. tagged along."

Topanga laughed. "Cory didn't want to miss a thing. You gave him a full life - years of adventure." She looked down. "Did you ever wonder what sent him running to New York?"

"Last-minute jitters, maybe, or nostalgia.." This was too much. It was still raw. 

"Shawn, he said you'd had a fight. Cory said he couldn't marry me unless - "

She saw that you were drowning, and she threw you a lifeline, changing the subject. "I wanted to get these things to you sooner. There's some of his favorite clothes in there, and the poetry book you gave him. He took notes in the margins."

You laughed. "Really?"

"Really. He wanted to be able to talk to you about poetry - or at least bluff his way through it convincingly."

You thanked her for the box. She thanked you for coming. When she looked around the room and found you missing, she wasn't surprised. She understood.


	4. Time Marches On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Later on

Three years. Three years, eight moves, eleven jobs, dozens of one-night stands; you'd buried yourself deep where anyone who truly cared for you would never find you.

But you were so tired - the kind of tired you couldn't sleep away, the kind that sags the skin and melts the muscles and judders the bones. Then you began to forget things, and even to forget what it was that you'd forgotten. Even as your mind goes, the pain stays.

You were too weak to climb the stairs to your apartment and you'd forgotten which one was yours. Your head hurt, and then you were falling and when you landed you were in a strange bed while a woman cried from the chair beside you. You didn't remember her name but her eyes were kind and she was looking at you, looking at you as if it killed her but she could not turn away.

The woman stayed with you as a man in white told you that you were dying and explained the hows and whys when all that mattered to you was the WHEN, as in WHEN can I leave this bag of bones and fly free and you tried to listen but nothing stayed anymore. He said you needed medicine to ease the pain, but he did not understand that bodily pain is the easiest kind. You slept again.

The woman stayed. You saw her belly was very big and you wanted to ask her but the words came out wrong and she cried again, holding a finger to your lips. You did not speak again after that, but she petted your hair and told you how much you were loved and she was the bringer of stories about you and your best friend, the one who traveled this road before you.

The last time she came to see you she did not smile. The stories had all been told and there were no more envelopes to open and it was time for the waiting part. You thought and you thought and before you closed your eyes you remembered that a woman who loves you and takes care of you is called a mother, and you felt lucky to have such a good one in your life even if it was too late.

When you woke, you felt better than you had in years. The room was dark, but a beautiful man was smiling at you, watching you wake up.

"Cory?"

"Hi, Shawnie."

The room disappeared like wisps of smoke and you were away, gone somewhere else but not very far. There was no one else as far as the eye could see, and the color of the sky looked like the world was just born.

"Cory, why did you have to die?"

"I was at a crossroads, Shawn. I could stay on the path I was on, marry Topanga - "

that was her name, you remembered now - 

"or I could find my way home."

"Home? As in, me?"

The laugh - my God, how you'd missed that sound. "Yes, of COURSE you."

You paused. "Cory.. Did she know? I mean, did she figure it out before, or did she ever listen to the voicemails, or - "

"She would've married me no matter what, Shawn. My death was the catalyst for the change; it saved her. It gave her the freedom to find a new path, without the guilt of abandoning me, or the burden of loving a man whose heart could never be fully hers."

You could see it now: they'd gone from friends to fiancees, and they would have gone from spouses to friends, then to friends with nothing in common. 

"Topanga's with a great guy, Shawn, like she always deserved."

You remembered something else. "She's going to be a mom."

Cory beamed. "I know."

"What happened to the baby you tried to save, Cor?"

Cory smiled even wider. "Oh, her? Yeah, she's good people. We hung out together for a few years until she decided it was time to go back and try again."

You blinked. "Back?"

His grin, coupled with the gleam in his eye, told you what had happened - but you had to ask, to be sure. "Topanga's baby?"

"Ding ding ding ding ding! The very same." He softened a little. "Topanga's still in touch with the other mom. She's gonna get to hold her own baby, even if she never realizes it."

Your head was spinning. "I don't understand all this, Cor."

He took you in his arms, and you found that touch was just as real here as it was on earth - maybe more so. It felt like your energies were blending, like you were one person. It was heaven.

"I don't either. I know the world wasn't ready for Cory and Shawn, not then. Maybe someday."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, when you're ready.. we can try again. We can find each other all over again, Shawn. We won't be 'Shawn and Cory,' we'll be Blank and What'sHisName, but we'll get our chance at a life together."

You looked at the world, the people you'd left behind. Jack had Eric; Amy and Alan still had Topanga, and they would treat her like a daughter, meaning they'd be grandparents soon; Angela was living her life, seeing the world.. "Do we have to go back, Cor? Can't we just stay here and be us forever?"

"I'm not sure about 'forever,' Shawn. But for a long time, yes. Oh - and the baby? Her name's gonna be Corrine."

"So her nickname is gonna be Corrie?" That was both the saddest and the funniest thing you'd heard in a long time. "Poor kid!"

"I know. Topanga's thinking about Shawna as a middle name; should we poke her, make it happen?"

You let that idea hang there, just letting it be. "Cory.. about the fight.. all the fights, actually - they were because I was afraid to say 'I love you.' "

Cory kissed you, and you felt like the universe opened up. You could go anywhere, do anything - but all you wanted to do was be with him, wherever you ended up. "I love you, too." He said the words, and you knew you would die one thousand times a day every day just to get to that moment. 

"We could really find each other again in that crazy world?"

"Yes, Shawnie."

You'd think it over. For now, you needed another kiss. "I believe you, Cory. You always find me - even when I don't realize I'm missing."

-End Beginning


End file.
